


Danny Boy

by HistoricalPhan (FateAndFiction)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), Video Blogging & YouTube RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Death, Historical Inaccuracy, Illnesses, M/M, War, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 07:23:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2142156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FateAndFiction/pseuds/HistoricalPhan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a short fic I wrote after seeing a prompt on phanfic (tumblr). <br/>---<br/>Prompt: Not sure if its been done yet but, songfic based off the ballad Danny Boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Danny Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Even though I was taught slightly different lyrics I used the ones from Wikipedia as I’m sure they’re more accurate. Also, please please don’t be offended that both boys are still from England, I know the song is Irish but I don’t know enough about Irish history to respectfully write a story set in that place or time so I wrote it set somewhere I’m more familiar with. Please forgive any historical inaccuracies, this is only a short drabble I wrote after seeing the prompt on phanfic.

_Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling_

_From glen to glen, and down the mountain side,_

_The summer's gone, and all the roses falling,_

_It's you, it's you must go and I must bide._

_~~~_

Phil pulled Dan into a tight hug, the other boy on his knees and his head in Phil’s chest. The older fisted his hands in his boy’s hair and tried to stop the tears from streaming down his face.

“If I could go in your place I would,” he whispered, his chest heaving as fat tears dripped onto his Daniel’s curly hair, “God Dan, I’d give my life if it meant you could stay here safe,”

Dan laughed weakly as he pulled away, his big brown eyes watery and his bottom lip trembling.

“It’s me that was called up, not you. And don’t talk like that, I don’t want to hear you speak of dying again Phil, I’m already sick with worry over you,”

Phil closed his eyes and kissed Dan’s forehead tenderly, the action meaning more than any spoken goodbye.

Later that day he watched from his crutches as the train pulled away from the station, his Dan’s hand waving determinedly from the sea of dull greens and browns. He waited for the train to disappear from the platform before he let his sad smile drop and he waited until he was through their front door before he let himself cry.

_~~~_

_But come ye back when summer's in the meadow,_

_Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow,_

_It's I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow,_

_Oh, Danny Boy, oh Danny Boy, I love you so!_

_~~~_

The first letter he received was bitter and spoke of nothing but mud and rain and misery, it hurt his heart to read about his Danny in such pain but he kept a brave face as he penned his own response, the letter filled with false promises of Dan coming home he knew he couldn’t keep.

The locals were being nice to him, he doubted they would be if they’d have known the truth, but they were being as caring and condescending as they could be for the sad, sick cripple in the small cottage at the edge of the village. He was the only one left from his generation, all the other men were gone apart from the young boys and the elderly men too frail to fight. He wished more than anything he was there by his boy’s side, he didn’t care if it were on the battlefield or even in his own living room, just as long as he was by his Dan’s side he’d have been grateful.

He watched the seasons change from glorious summer to the deepest winter, his letters from Dan being the only thing keeping him going along with the wretched prayers he whispered at night in vain. The summer months were too warm for his broken body and the winter too cold, he could feel the very life slipping from his aching bones.

While Dan was slowly dying in a trench, Phil was dying in his bed.

_~~~_

_But when ye come, and all the flowers are dying,_

_If I am dead, as dead I well may be,_

_Ye'll come and find the place where I am lying,_

_And kneel and say an Ave there for me;_

_~~~_

The doctor came around one day just as the summer faded into autumn, almost a year since his boy had gone to fight for king and country. Phil didn’t cry from the news he was given, he’d known it all along really, but he did cry from the thought of Dan coming home and him being gone. He didn’t have long left to live, his illness had eaten up inside of him and he was on his last legs. The toll of the war and the battlefield in his body slowly killing him.

He sobbed into his pillow that night, begging that he could die in his Daniel’s place, that his boy could come home from the hell he was living in. He prayed that his boy would come back in one piece, as bright and beautiful as he had been the day he’d gone, as perfect and whole as the boy Phil remembered.

He wrote one last letter to his love explaining the doctor’s diagnosis and hoped that Dan wouldn’t notice the tearstains that marred his words, the pain in his heart from the notion greater than the screaming pain of his body.

He sent his last letter with a kiss.

_~~~_

_And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me,_

_And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be,_

_For you will bend and tell me that you love me,_

_And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me!_

_~~~_

Dan never got the last letter Phil had sent and Phil never got the telegram. While Phil lay beneath the ground at home, Dan lay in an unmarked grave on foreign land. Though it was a cruel fate for them, their families took comfort in the knowledge that they were finally together and at peace, they were both casualties of a war that had taken so many lives.

In the poppy fields of France and the snowdrop sprinkled churchyard in England the two boys slept. Phil’s aching bones hurt no more and Dan’s battle-scarred mind and body were as bright as the day he’d left all that time ago, and though the ugliness of the war and its effect on the world carried on, their spirits no longer had to suffer it.

Phil was finally reunited with his Dan, his boy.


End file.
